Letter: Glendale’s water issues remain liquid

Kudos to Harry Zavos and Larry Moorehouse of the Glendale Coalition for Better Government in drafting an alternative proposal to save millions of dollars for a repowering of the Grayson power plant.

The GWP report card as given by Steve Zurn of GWP at a recent City Council meeting showed Glendale not only reached but surpassed Gov. Brown’s mandate of a 20% to a 25% reduction in water usage.

Coupled with this report, Zurn pointed out Glendale has been able to actually purchase less water during this time. However Mr. Zurn also stated costs to run GWP remained the same. It was also pointed out in the News-Press on Friday, Oct. 30, that the City Council opted not to raise customer drought fees, which one would expect given lower costs for purchasing water due to customer conservation.

At this time one can only postulate if a surplus in revenue would actually be possible over the coming months thus diminishing the need for the next phase of drought fee increases. Zurn is due back in six months to advise Council on the matter of drought fee increases which would nearly take the extra charge from $14.25 to $24.70 in the cubic feet of water usage equation.

During the interim, a cautious welcome to El Niño. Just imagine if there was actually a rebound affect into 2018 from it. How very regretful California would be for not building reservoirs during the past 25 years to catch some of this precious rainfall, thus reducing water utility dependence.

Lou Fabbiano

Glendale